Tee Shirt Update

OK. Here is a bit more information, although its all a bit preliminary so I'm not sure how helpful it is going to be.

As to the name of the project, I have no idea. Make it up. Or, if that is too much work, call it....CDOTAME-Catholic Diocese of Torit's Anti-Malarial Extravaganza.

The tee shirts have to get across any of the following ideas:

• You always have to use the net, every single night for the entire year
• Nets will protect your children and your family from dying of malaria
• If everyone uses a net, mosquitos will start dying in your area-therefore if you are using one and your neighbor isnt, you are still at risk.
• Pregnancy treatments of malaria can help save lives. Go to your local ANC for nets and medicines.
• Mosquitos are annoying. It is nicer to sleep without them.

The project is being implemented mostly by CDoT. It is hoping to get nets to everyone in Eastern Equatoria-one net for every two people. We are also getting treatment for pregnant ladies and Home based fever management for children under five.

Lets see if that helps.

Of Note

There are some things I have been noticing that are disjointed but I want to mention them.
No one turns off their watches when their watch alarms go off. They let them beep. One more reason why Ed gets along well with Sudanese people.

Clothing: People wear absurdly fancy things to do everyday tasks. It’s wonderful. You’ll see women dressed in two piece dinner outfits and children in party gowns baking bread or cleaning the porch. Men wear suits to work everyday, even though its hot out. Long sleeved shirts, long wool pants. No sweat. Meanwhile George and I and Neesha are all in tee shirts and capris to try and escape the heat. But everyone else looks like they could be lifted out of this little village in Sudan and transported to a dinner gala, and look completely appropriate. And no one wears black (who would want to, its so hot). Everyone is in bright colors and patterns. It’s like a rainbow every time a group of women sit together.

Names: Fantastic old fashioned names. Rosemary. Clara. Doris. Betsy. Jane. Helen. Florence. Mimi. Margaret. Abigail. Alice. Lucy. Charles. Emmanual. Dominic. Paul. You don’t find Michelle or Sarah, or Emily or Katie or Megan or any of the other names so common in the US today. Imagine you were living in the 50’s where everyone had nice names, and wore skirts all the time, and you can start to imagine here. I love it. I want to name my child Doris.

Jerome is 27! He doesn’t look 27. No one here looks their age. They all look ridiculously young, up to a point, and then they look ridiculously old. Father Ben is 37, and he looks to be at most 25. Jerome looks like he should be 18 or 20. I told him he couldn’t be 27 and he asked what it took to be 27 which made me pause. He doesn’t act young. He seems like he does at first glance, but he is very steady actually. And very old fashioned. He is having trouble finding girls that he likes, he doesn’t like James Bond movies because “James Bond lies too much”, and he wants to make enough money to get married and have lots of kids (boys and girls). He let it slip he can speak a little of most languages, but he wouldn’t tell me about himself until we are leaving, he said. Its just interesting. He isn’t what he seems to be.

Reverend Mother was talking about Arabs and Blacks in Sudan and what she had to say was interesting. The Arab north doesn’t like to consider itself “black”, and the word for black in Arabic is slave (or at least, that is how it was explained to me, and how it is used). They see themselves as separate from the rest of Sudan, separated by their religion, and their identity, and their skin color (though most of them are dark). They are often surprised to go to other countries and be treated like black people. Regardless, she was telling us about it, and how she didn’t blame people for resenting the Arabs in the north because there was so much viciousness. One man called her a donkey. Ultimately, she said, there can’t be reconciliation between the North and the South. Black southerners cant be accepted as Muslim. “Their prayers don’t mean as much.” But when asked if she thought there was going to be a civil war, she frowned. She said she hoped not, because “if we have another civil war then we will have begun with war and we will end with war and we will die with war. We will never escape it.” It was bleak, but this was a woman who had lived through it all before. Had a gun held to her head that only didn’t hit her because the man guarding her pushed it away and took the bullet himself. It is hard to imagine that happening over again without looking at it with desolation.

One man said in the staff meeting, “We are all Africans and therefore we are all polygamists” and a journalist we were talking to didn’t know you could only have one wife in the US and asked us why.

Pasquena in her childhood:
Pasquena once tried to steal honey by climbing on her brother’s back to reach it. It fell and covered both of them with honey and her mother made her go outside and stand in the sun “to be licked clean by the flies”

I'm pretty sure crickets snore. I was napping in the morning after breakfast and all I could hear was this hushed version of a cricket chirp, but to the tempo of breathing. Also I accidentally killed the children of my family of crickets and I felt a bit guilty about it.

There are always sun showers during the day, but never a real storm until night.

Kimotong

Our first impression of Kimotong was marred by a couple of pretty intense things. To begin with, we were headed there at five thirty at night, about the time the sun begins to set. Our night driving up to this point has been confined to…well…none, so no one in the backseat was particularly happy when Ed decided we should drive there to go on a fishing expedition. He was searching for two men, one named Hillary and the other named Peter Lamong.
The drive there was very beautiful, strictly speaking. Palm trees stretched into the air and bushy plants leaned out over dry river beds. To be honest, it felt like we were driving through the set of Jurassic Park, and as we drove over the rivers, which were, at the moment, rivers of dry, cracked sand, I could easily imagine a huge T-Rex galloping down the sand towards our car. It was really cool, but not a reassuring image. The coconuts were orange and unripe and you could see them hanging in clusters from the topmost reaches of the palm trees. But soon, the lush greenery became more and more interspersed with scrubby thorn bushes and stunted trees, and more of the ground underfoot became sandy and cracked. I was sitting by the window, and as the wind whipped past our car windows, I kept thinking that I heard little children laughing. As Neesha pointed out, they would be less likely to laugh, as to shout Khawaja if they were real children and not just my imagination, but it was eerie hearing children giggling, while looking out the window at nothing but blank and empty land.
We soon ran into a traffic jam of cows. They were stretched up the road as far as the eyes could see, and the men tending them shepherded the ones who didn’t respond to Jerome’s honk of the horn, onto the side of the road. They were carrying guns, or spears, or bows and arrows, bright jewelry around their necks or studded in their noses, shirtless, or pants-less, and running, tall, alongside our car. Some of them were carrying spears in one hand, and huge legs of skinned goat in the other, and the red meat was slowly solidifying in the hot air so that it looked like jerky. We were saying Salaam as we drove past, and some of them ran fast enough to shake our hands, before falling back into the dust being kicked up by our tires, so I leaned out the window and shouted hello to one boy. He shouted Salaam back, but apparently, it was only afterwards that he saw my skin color. And he Freaked Out. He started chasing our car screaming incoherently, brandishing his spear in one hand and his goat leg in the other, and even though he was soon left in the dust behind us, it was scary and confusing. Kimotong isn’t that remote. But it was remote enough that not many people had seen white skin before, I guess. Regardless, to go from phantom laughing to being chased by a spear wielding boy, was not a move in a more welcoming direction.
We finally pulled into Kimotong and our car was almost instantly surrounded. Children mobbed the sides, interspersed with tall, handsome men, while the elders crowded around the front windows, trying to talk all at once. We inched forwards and parked, and all unpiled from the car. Instantly packs of children were pressed in on all sides. Older people crowded behind them. This is typical. But unlike other villages, and perhaps due to the feeling already settling itself in me, it felt like they were surrounding us. This feeling was not at ALL helped by the man who came up to me first. He was barefoot, dressed in a white shirt that went to his ankles. He had hot, feverish eyes that stayed fixed on my face, not blinking. He didn’t blink once the entire time we were in Kimotong. He talked in short, staccato bursts of violent sound, and when he shook my hand, he didn’t let go. I couldn’t tell he was drunk. I don’t seem to be able to tell here. (I think it is because everyone is so new and different that my baseline for sobriety is non-existent, I don’t know what is drunkenness and what is eccentricity, what is slurred speech from beer and what is English as a second language) He tried to lead me off to a building, but Ed alerted me to the fact that he was very drunk and I went over to George and Neesha and Jerome, who were all huddled together, also feeling uncomfortable. A small girl shyly shook my hand, and lingered, feeling my hand with her fingers as if expecting white skin to feel different. Maybe it did.
The drunk man wouldn’t leave us alone, and meanwhile more and more men were circling around us, shaking our hands, standing mute and solid behind our backs. One man was blind in one eye; it looked like his eye had merely rolled back into his head on one side. The drunk man kept asking me to take a picture, and Jerome told me to get the children in it too to make it less awkward, so I shuffled them all in and took the picture, and the usual crowding and shouting and jostling broke out until some old men broke it up with some quick slaps. The drunk guy took my camera from me, and I wrestled it back. He asked me where I was from, and Jerome supplied that I was from South Africa. He seemed content with this answer, and began loudly explaining in brief sentences that we were in Sudan, and that there were black people here. This was something we figured out a long time ago, and we followed Ed, who had found the chief, up to the guest compound, the drunk man following two inches behind me.
We got to the compound, where they were apparently in the middle of a radio distribution, though they stopped it when we came in. Some men brought chairs and centered them in the middle of the courtyard made by the L-shaped guest house, and then men, endless amounts of men, lined up on every side and every seat surrounding us. We were facing Peter Lamong, who had a disability of some type that made him have to have arm crutches (polio?) and Hillary, the chief. Hillary was an old man dressed all in black, and he seemed to be made up of nothing but skin, hollowed muscle, and bone. His cheeks were pitted, his collarbone sunken, but wiry muscle covered his arms, making him seem a bit like a rope of licorice, twined, twisted, thin but strong.
Ed conducted his meeting, while Neesha, George and I just looked around. Next to us were the mountains. A wall of rock fed up, folding over on itself to make ledges where goats were scaling and women, balancing water in jugs on their head, were making their way carefully down. I was astonished by their strength and balance. It was straight down a cliff but they just picked their way daintily down. Jerome hiked up a bit, and I was jealous, because the air was cool and the sun was setting, and far up on the rock was open space, not space crowded with people whose eyes bore into your back. Ed asked me to go get the car, and Jerome came down and the two of us went and brought the car up to the compound. I was fishing around in the trunk for my notebook, and as I turned around, the drunk man was literally a couple of inches away from me, his eyes staring right at me. I stepped around him and he followed me back to my chair. George later told me that he just stared at my back for the entire, hour long meeting, not blinking, not looking away. While I was gone, a man apparently asked Ed what it would cost to marry me (I think (hope) to his son, because he had earlier been bragging about how he had three wives who were constantly pregnant, and he looked about sixty, and lewd, so I wasn’t at all keen to imagine him sizing me up for himself). Ed told him 140 fertile cows, and they bartered a bit and thank GOD I wasn’t there for it because I would have turned bright red and been uncomfortable. Obviously.
At the end of the meeting, we shook hands, and got in the car to drive back. Neesha was scared of driving at night because of all the stories we had heard about bandits, but Ed assured us that he had made sure the road was safe and so we hopped in the car and headed off into the last vestiges of sunlight. After about ten minutes or so, the sun had sunk in earnest, so as we were passing these villages near Kimotong, it was completely dark. One village had had what appeared to be a rocket launcher draped in drying laundry when we had driven in, and that same village was filled with screaming young men when we passed out. They were shouting and waving at our car, but we couldn’t tell what they were saying, and just kept driving. Needless to say, it was unnerving.
The drive home was nice, but at times equally nerve wracking. The entire evening seemed coated with this palpable unease. There was no light except what was being made by our headlights. The stars were gorgeous and covered the sky completely, and though there wasn’t a moon, one particularly bright star gave anchor to the whole sky. The smell was fantastic, this thick, heady smell of vegetation thriving, and I put in my headphones to drown out the talk about malaria (which I am sick of , at least in terms of hearing it 24/7) and just relaxed. Well, relaxed as much as anyone can relax hitting every single pothole in the road. At one point, Ed stopped the car (he had taken over driving for Jerome so he (Ed) could “stretch his legs”) on the middle of a bridge, and turned off the lights. He tells us “this is where lions like to hang out” and then tells us to listen. We ask what we are suppose to be listening for, being a bit nervous about the idea of lions, and he says “Frogs”. FROGS. We can hear frogs in Torit. We tell him to stop being ridiculous and get back in the car, and we drive off again. We saw two huge porcupines with their quills sticking straight up running alongside the road and followed them for a while before they dashed off into the brush. Two foxes darted next to our car, and an owl swooped down and up out of the light of our headlights.
But the most spectacular thing was the heat lightening. The sky would just light up, brilliantly, with these dashes of pure white light that would illuminate the clouds and their outlines and temporarily illuminate the trees and the road and everything in its path. It was like a present for getting through the day ok. We just watched the heat lightening scatter across the sky, and looked at the stars spread thick across the sky like the sister’s mango jam, and smelled the scent of the grass growing as tall as our cars, and listened to the absolute silence of the land around us, and drove.

Isoke

We got up at about 6 a.m. to go to Isoke. It was a relatively spur of the moment trip decision, but we were packed and ready to go around 7 and we headed out with some bread for breakfast. The drive there was bumpy, but nice. Isoke is located in the mountains, so it is about three hours of driving through these incredible valleys and hills with palm trees splayed up into the sky.
When we got to Isoke, we found we were in someplace utterly different from Torit. Torit is green, but Isoke is vivid with plants. Tall trees that reminded me of oaks lined the road we drove down, past the hospital and up to the Diocese mission where we were staying. It was like something out of one of my trips to France; these tree lined boulevards with people lounging in the shade.
At the sister’s house we met Sister Helen. She is my favorite nun ever. (Seriously nuns love me and I love nuns). She brought us into their parlor, which was so quaint. It had pictures of priests and sisters on the walls, and plush red chairs with knitted doilies on them, and a table covered in lace, which, when she removed the lace, was groaning under the weight of the breakfast she was serving us. Tea and coffee and fresh mango jam and mango honey and steaming chapatti and fresh oranges. It was delicious.
After breakfast we walked down to the hospital itself. It is snuggled in the crevice between two huge mountains, so wherever you look, you see walls of rock jutting up in front of you. The main building of the hospital was bright blue and ranch-style, three buildings set up around an open courtyard where about a hundred women with squalling children were seated under a tree. The porches of the hospital spilled over with patients, some lying on blankets with their eyes closed, some huddled on steps, some lounging with bum legs propped up on a rock.
The hospital was a brutal wake up. Isoke is one of the best hospitals in Eastern Equatoria, with the best staff, the most equipment, and the nicest facilities. But it was still harsh. Sister Helen took us to the hospital room for children first. There were about 25 beds and every single one was sagging under the weight of three mothers and three babies, sitting legs dangling over the edges. The smell was oppressive and heavy. Some of the babies were crying but worse were the ones who were just lying on their mother’s lap, vacant eyes staring ahead, mouths worried by flies, heads falling over their mother’s arm like their necks were made of rope, rather than bone. The mothers looked harried, thin and tired. Half of them were breast feeding, their shirts unbuttoned to their stomachs, and they too gazed into space (although when we walked in, their eyes snapped onto us). Ed questioned the doctor on duty who was walking from bed to bed inspecting the children. As we left, more women were called in from the waiting crowd outside, to join the ranks of the women on the beds.
From there we went and saw the dispensary; a warehouse with walls and walls of shelves, piled high with medicines, and run by this very nice, neatly dressed woman named Jane. They actually used ACTs for treatment there, which was phenomenal given how difficult it can be to obtain. From there we went up and saw rooms for surgery, and were told that one woman was shot five times by people trying to get revenge against her husband; once each in the throat, arm, chest, stomach and butt, yet the doctors managed to stabilize her enough to get her to Kitkum in Uganda. I was impressed. It is an hour and a half drive over rutted potholes to get to Kitkum.
A nurse named Taban showed us the rooms for adults. There was a man who had been shot in the leg who had pulled off the dressings from it in delirium during the night. His leg was now propped up on a sling, with screws into his ankle to keep it steady. The bandages were already stained a rusty, diluted red from blood and pus. The same smell as in the children’s ward clung around it, and followed us outside, to where some men were sitting on the patio and a child was lying on a blanket with a purple marker taped to his wrist. I think I know what this smell is. It is the smell of sweat from people who eat sorghum, a compounded, intensified odor of the sour sweet smell of sorghum and the salty tang of sweat, combined with the crusted smell of sickness. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that it was overpowering, lingering, and everywhere. It was the most accurate smell of sickness I’ve ever come across.
We went to the lab next, and saw under the microscope the malaria parasite. Neesha got a picture of it through the lens, after MUCH effort. George was in his element. Jerome was enamoured of the lab technician, Joyleen. Taban was impatient. He took us to the TB ward next, which was empty because the patients (39 of them) were outside getting air under the tree. So, obviously, he took us to the tree as well. Jerome was freaked out because he didn’t want to catch TB (a valid fear) and Neesha didn’t look happy about it either. I wasn’t that concerned. I didn’t get vaccinated for TB (its kind of useless) but no one coughed on me so I think I’ll be fine. They all looked very tired, and one woman, nursing a small child, had lesions on her stomach which she pulled back to show us. Another small child, who didn’t have TB, was sitting under the tree, helping take care of her sick mother and younger brother. They smiled at us, but in a lonely way. I felt bad, but no one touched them, no one shook their hands. We left quickly and they watched us go.
We saw the registration desk and the administration rooms, and periodically from the children’s ward you would hear the babies, individual cries melding into one wailing sound, like the window howling through the trees in the winter that blew in and out of our ears as we walked. They took us to the maternity ward next, where two midwives came to greet us, and Taban left us. They took us into the clinic where they would give women their vitamins and HIV tests and medicines, and Ed questioned them and I eased my way down onto a stool, as my legs were still screaming in pain from the lunges. Then they brought us into the birthing room. It was terrifying. On one wall, a sink, and a shelf covered in a plastic sheet covered rubber boots, gloves, medicines, towels and metal objects. Another table had a scale. But the main part of the room was taken up by a bed, with wooden stirrups and a metal IV pole and dark black leather pads and crude steps leading up to it. The midwives were telling us how women were afraid to come to the Ante-natal clinics, and that they preferred to give birth in a tukul, and looking at the bed, I didn’t blame them. Birth seemed terribly real, in a messy, bloody way, standing in that room. It didn’t seem like healthy babies could be born there. It seemed like it was a room for emergencies only.
The midwives also told us that many women didn’t want to come to the ANCs because they thought they wouldn’t be allowed to give birth squatting, which was how they wanted to. Ed made some suggestions, and told me that it might be interesting to come back and work on maternal health, in part by convincing women to go to the clinics, next summer.
After the trip to the hospital we went back to the sisters. We had lunch (chicken! Pasta! Carrots!) and then up to the church, which is, interestingly enough, one of the first brick buildings I’ve seen in Sudan. Real bricks. Handmade bricks. Set up against the mountains, it looked like something out of the Sound of Music. I expected Julie Andrews to burst out of the doors at any moment, singing about how wonderful the mountains are, but needless to say, she didn’t. We went inside the church, which was huge and European, though the paintings on the walls were of Sudanese people standing on the point between heaven and hell. The church itself was a pale blue inside, decorated with (white) statues of the Virgin Mary and some drums sat right by the alter. So we sat down and started to thump at them. School children heard us and came into the church, slowly, and we invited them to help us play them. It soon became incredibly apparent that it is very true that white people don’t have rhythm. They made these drums play music while we just made noise.
From there, we walked with this Italian doctor (Dr. Santini who had bad teeth and eight children, and smelled good) to the school run by the Diocese. It went all the way up to senior secondary, and the compound was covered in children. It was beautiful, because the mountains framed behind it. The kids who followed us had distended bellies, and runny noses, but Dr. Santini marched right up to them and inspected their fingernails, showing them to us and saying “Look! They paint their nails like girls!” The boy in question snatched his hand away and looked at us shyly. He had the sweetest face, that I got a picture of all of them, just so I would remember him.
Then we took naps, before going to the Hospital staff meeting. It was under a tree, and suppose to be two hours long. It was four hours long, and half of it ended up being inside, when the skies opened up and it started to rain. A gimpy puppy was sleeping under Ed’s chair and I kept trying to lure it to me with no success. Another dog, an adult, wandered into the circle during the meeting, and a brutal looking man whipped it with a switch and it ran off yelping. One woman sitting on a blanket for the meeting was crippled, with locked up legs, imprisoned, wooden.
Lots of things were touched on in the meeting, though it went on forever and I just wanted to leave at the end of it. Then Neesha and I carried our chairs back in the dark, and I fell in a ditch full of leaves and sank up to my waist, and we had dinner and watched BBC news and debated politics. I took a shower ( a glorious shower, considering how sticky I felt) and chatted with the Reverend Mother Pasquena about civil war and race hatred and then I wandered off to bed in a comfortable room with the temperature the exact same as my body. During the night, there was howling, which I thought, sleepily, was a woman shouting “Echo! Echo!” down the hillside, and being answered by packs of dogs. But it was actually leopards. Go figure.
The next morning we got a wake up call at six am by marching and singing people stamping down the street outside our window. It was the local school. Every Saturday they went running, accompanied by whistles, people in town who wanted to run, and chants. It was a nice way to wake up, and I sat out on the patio with a cup of tea and a book and watched them march past and relaxed. The sisters came over to me and held my hand warmly in both of theirs and asked me how my night had been and seemed so happy to see me. They remembered my name more readily than Neesha’s because her name is just kind of difficult for Sudanese people in general. They were all so motherly and quiet and it was lovely just sitting there with them. We had breakfast (homemade: peanut butter, thick mango jam, honey, tea, chapatti, rolls) and then sat outside in the shade of our car and the mango trees while girls from the school came and helped to do laundry and cleaning, and Ed tried to fix a generator, and Neesha tried to track down Emmanual (whose nickname, we discovered, is “The Runaway Priest” because he ran away from seminary school.) Sister Helen gave me her address and told me that she wanted me to say there, and that she would give me her veil so I could become a sister too. She even offered to come to Torit and cook for us and take care of us and I wish she actually could. She baked us fresh bread for the road, and gave us a bag of cabbage, so that when we got underway we wouldn’t be hungry. The bread was still hot from the oven when she packed it into our car. A tailor was there sewing the new uniforms, which was so fascinating to watch. He was excellent. I wish I could make my own clothing because what he made looked so cool and refreshing. Taban came for his fitting, and was upset because it wasn’t tight enough on his butt, and I laughed at him and he looked slightly shamefaced. The sister’s even made us pizza, because they knew we were American. Sister Helen called me in and gave it to me like a present, and asked me to cut it. It was fish pizza (my luck) but I ate it anyway, because honestly, when someone goes through that amount of trouble, you don’t turn up your nose at it. She also told us that they know how to make cake. Can you imagine? Cake!
There was even a cat named Scooby, who bit people, but I cuddled him anyway. During lunch when I accidentally shot a piece of goat meat at the Reverend Mother, Scooby stole it and was quite happy with me about it. (Reverend Mother was amused, even though it almost hit her face) Sister Helen recognized that I loved animals, but she paid me a very high compliment (and voiced something I hadn’t thought much about) by saying that I was a lovely girl because “most people who love animals don’t love people.” Then she showed me this small animal, kind of like an antelope but the size of a small dog, named a dik dik (I don’t know how you spell that). It was tied to a tree, having been caught by some men, and it had big doe eyes and it let me pet it, even though it was a wild animal. It wasn’t afraid of me, and I scratched it behind it’s big bat like ears and it nuzzled me while I took picture’s of its tiny hooves. It was so cool! (Sorry dad, it seems I am unconcerned about rabies). Then we left, heading off to Kimotong.

A Game!

Can you spot the jackass?

Also: Fun challenge

We are (fingers crossed) hopefully getting this grant, and if we do we are getting Tee shirts! 1000 are for the community health workers who are going around pre-registering people. The other 1000 are for prizes, being sold, and of course, going in my suitcase.

Unfortunately we have no design or catchy phrase for it. SO. Your job, if you think of one while procrastinating at your computer and playing hearts when you are suppose to be working, is to post it here, so that it may be immortilized on a bunch of tee shirts which will ultimately be bartered in some 3rd world markets in East and Central Africa. You just cant buy that kind of fame.

GO!

Exercise

...sucks

I finally seem to have gotten on a decent sleep schedule, and I woke up at 6:45 by myself this morning and lay in bed listening to the birds for a while. Then George attempted to punch me through the window (and failed) and that kind of acted as the impetus to get me up.
He convinced me to exercise, and we agreed to go to the abandoned church across the field so no one would see us and laugh at us. (I'll write about that church soon-its incredible)
We wandered over, me in my leggings and Keens, and spent a while exploring the church and the surrounding buildings before deciding to get started.
We began with lunges. This was a bad choice. The lunges affirmed what we already knew: that we were incredibly incredibly out of shape. But they also expended pretty much every bit of energy I had. I never really understood the concept of lunges until this morning. They hurt like a bitch. After that we did squats and jumping jacks (neither of which I was remotely able to complete because my thighs were on fire) and then calf exercises and of course, during this time, all the small school children were walking to school, right past the church which has no doors, and they found the sight of the sweaty and wobbly khawajas hilarious.
Unfortunately when we got back, I was so exhausted that I skipped the upper body work and went straight for breakfast (peanut butter on a roll) and sweated and felt gross for about two hours. And then I got stomach cramps. All in all, a bit pathetic but hopefully I will improve.
Tomorrow we are visiting Isohe Hospital. I'll let you know how that goes.

Rolling with the Punches

George punched me in the face this morning. After kneeing me in the solar plexis (I didnt know he was that flexible honestly), we were in the office. We have been eating these HooHa bars (which I have a sneaky suspicion are actually "fatten up the starving children" bars) and have been running around shouting "HOOHA" and leaping out at each other from bushes. Anyway he was behind me and I was walking out of the office and I hear a whoosh and then a "HOOHA" behind me, and I turn to see what new thing he is springing on me and he PUNCHES ME IN THE FACE. And then! I squeal in pain and Ed comes storming out of the office and tells me to keep it down, so we slink outside giggling.

In actuality, the generator was on all day and it was amazing how productive we were. I wrote an entire first draft of an entire section of the proposal, which sounds like it was not that much work, but it was, and I found and summarized and created a spreadsheet for a list of Diocese buildings, parishes, schools, and health centers. Go me!
Neesha is having trouble with the fact that none of the statistics we have match up, which Ed says is the point. I understand her though. I found a website claiming that 144% of Sudanese people have access to health care.

I keep learning new things about people; primarily by snooping on them but I was forced to snoop so I feel that is excused. I helped Lucy get people's beds and rooms made up (we had lots of guests come yesterday) and part of that required moving Jerome out of one tent and into another. As all his clothing was piled on his bed, I thought he was in the shower. I was wrong. But it turns out that Jerome is a big (well, small, 5'6'' size) softy. He reads romance novels with titles like "Wildflower Bird" and "The Winchester Affair" and today, when I lent him my Ipod he was listening to Shania Twain. He says he likes to learn about girls, not date them. I'm not quite sure what that means. But he was definately humming along. Softy.

Abigail is engaged!! and has a 4 year old boy named Innocent who lives with her mother in Kenya. She is hoping to get married in December, because her fiancee is at school. I was so excited for her! Both her and Lucy work so hard (6-11) every day and dont get enough sleep or food. I try and help when I can but they are still on their feet all the time. So I'm teaching them songs. So far I have only managed to teach them one: Dominic the Donkey, and Lucy cant really remember the words so she just wanders around making the Donkey noise for the chorus, which is hilarious.

Its like a family here. Emmauel and Joseph have a car you have to push to start every single time and so every morning we have to all get behind and push, and unless its going downhill it doesnt start, and Jerome yells expletives and the car put put puts up the driveway. Ydo wanders around with a cup of coffee in his hand, and Lucy wanders back and forth between the tents and the office, and Abigail sits under the trees peeling potatoes or kneading chapati bread. The French Guy wanders around looking shy and sweet, the workers wheel their wagons and wheelbarrows back and forth between the fields and the stone quarry behind the office, and Tiadoneus types away in his office, periodically sticking his head in the door to give a jolly "hel-lo!"Susan pats me on the back everytime she sees me and we have tea together and sometimes Margaret from Lokichoggio joins us. Its homey. Too bad I have to go to Juba on Sunday to see Ed off. I dont like Juba. It is dusty and hotter and busier and not as friendly. Torit is glorious.

Self-esteem and generators

In hindsight, it was probably a poor decision to explain the concept of “love handles” to Lucy.
She was wildly entertained by the definition, and insisted that I draw her examples, but since then every time we walk side by side she grabs my waist and squeezes it and says “Surely Emma you give me these”. Trust me, I would love to. She doesn’t have them (I doubt anyone in Africa does) but she wants them. I tried explaining that in America, love handles are a sign that you are (to quote George) “un-toned, fat and lazy” but she is too delighted to take stock in that.
To further ruin my self esteem, this has come around the same time that Abigail started telling me I am growing fat “like a chicken”. She pokes at my belly like I’m the Pillsbury Doughboy (ironic considering George is part-Pillsbury) and tells me I am fat and white. She smiles when she says it.
I don’t take offense. They both mean what they say, but not in a bad-natured way, so I find I don’t mind. I did not intend to come to Africa and put on any type of weight, and frankly I think I’m about the same weight as I was when I came here, but the diet of pure starch that I am fed probably isn’t helping matters. Periodic goat only does so much to balance one’s diet. Either way, we spend a great deal of time laughing about this and secretly I plot to jog to Nairobi and back every morning-although considering the clothing I have at my disposal for exercise (tight leggings, a PJ shirt, and Keens hiking sandals) I imagine that I will probably face further ridicule on my morning jogs. (Also-lets be honest, there is the fact that jogging and I have never been best friends)
I think in my head I thought that I would come back from Africa thin and tan, but Sudan seems hell bent on crushing that thought to dust. Let's face it. I'm not tanning, and I'm not losing weight. I am as white and plushy as I was before I got here. Which is more than fine. I'm learning so much-both in life and about myself. My expansion of knowledge more than makes up for a parallel expansion in my waist line. It just doesn't seem fair.

Beyond that, Ed is driving me crazy. I don't know if we have analogous work temperaments. He has had all these close meetings with Neesha and George respectively, but not with me. And anytime I get upset when he tries to give a piece of my work to someone else, he acts as if I am not a team player. It isn't that. Its that I came on this internship to learn specific things, and I'm not learning them. Neesha and George are. I don't begrudge them this; they are doing amazing work. I just feel like Ed isn't giving me a chance and it is irritating.
Don't get me wrong, I'm working on spreadsheets and compiling information but I wish there was more teamwork, rather than so much individual, piecemeal collaboration. I dont mean to complain about him. He is fantastic and has taught me so much. It's just that when you get frustrated, you dont want to concentrate on how great someone is. You want to dwell on the couple of things they do that drive you crazy. Its just difficult.
But then again, who expects an internship in Sudan to be easy?

Work here is a bit difficult without a generator. It means I'm having more time to research but I don't want to slack off on the proposal work. Everywhere we go we see evidence of people's reliance on generators-vaccines, computer databases, light in the evening-everyone is utterly reliant on it. Finding a cold soda in the market means finding the one or two stalls with refrigerators. I wish solar power was actually the panacea everyone is claiming it to be. It would help so much.

And finally, as a note to myself: I need to wash my backpack. It reeks of goat. I've been smelling goat in my room for the past week and now I know where it stems from. Let me tell you, coming fresh from a shower and instantly smelling goat.....its a bit discouraging.

Criminally Stupid, Morally Corrupt

There are some obstacles you expect to run into when attempting any type of project, particularly when it is political in any way. There is the typical bureaucracy, the endless paperwork, the stonewalling from various officials, the game of hot-potato that occurs whenever you walk into someone’s office and ask for something, only to get foisted off on someone else. There are uncooperative secretaries, and people you can never get on the phone, and conflicting information from various reliable sources and the flurry of meetings and emails that always leave you with more problems than what you started with. And there are some holes in the system that you can’t patch, some breaches in the normal routine that are the result of the years of conflict and chaos, which have become common, part of the structure of things.
But there are some types of obstacles you just don’t expect. Some kinds of negligence you don’t ever think you will run into because the implications are too disturbing to comprehend. And yesterday we ran into one of those.

During the Disease Control Priorities Conference, one of the main concerns people had involved drunkenness in the workplace. To me, it was like a dull buzz sounding in the back of pertinent facts and new information, so I didn't really consider it. I was too wrapped up in other things. But yesterday we came face to face with it, on a scale I wasn't expecting.
Alcohol, at a basic level, is huge here. Beer is readily available in all the villages; even the most remote outposts and villages can offer you a cold Pilsner or Tuskar beer at any moment. Sorghum, the staple grain and largest source of food and nourishment, is more often distilled into liquor or brewed into vats of beer, tubs of which are stored in tukuls to be served to guests or consumed during the heat of the day. Liquid lunches are fairly common. This isn’t much of a problem, as I think it takes a fair amount of beers to get drunk (and the alcohol content of sorghum beer is relatively low).
However, alcoholism is rampant. Part of this stems from the civil war. Sudan is home to some of the most courageous people in the world, but that bravery comes at a price. People living in times of conflict and war often have to become brave to survive. The act of cowardice is detrimental to existence, because sometimes, one must meet force with a force of their own-either violent force, or force of character. Rather than allow yourself to become accustomed to brutality day after day, and allow the violence being visited upon your friends and relatives become part of the norm, you have to react against it, and reacting against violence in any form is dangerous. In addition, merely living through times of chaos requires strength, and the ability to adapt and change and fight. Without any kind of order, with community falling apart and brutality and militarism becoming its substitute, one is forced to create order for themselves, and for many Sudanese, it seems that this order stemmed from upholding, even in the most limited sense, the idea of decency and community so endemic to Sudan.
But that doesn’t change the tragedies people lived through. The war brought devastation and destruction and death, and ordinary people trying to go about their ordinary lives were sucked into it, absorbed into it, and made witness to it. The things men and women lived through are often terrible to remember, and whereas bravery in times of chaos may be possible, it is harder to maintain in times of peace. Men who once fought brutally to maintain the life of Southern Sudan are now drowning themselves in alcohol. Mental health is one of the least addressed health issues in the entire developing world, and counseling, therapy, addiction programs and medication are all scarce, if unheard of.

Perhaps this is giving too much credit to the men and women who are now alcoholics. Certainly, some of them were weak of character then, and are weak of character now. Everyone has a brutal past, but not everyone is a drunk. I am merely trying to explain, more to myself than anyone else, why such a problem is so rampant, and so tolerated. No one wants to probe into issues like this. It is like stepping on a landmine.

Regardless, what we saw yesterday was, for all intents and purposes, inexcusable. While at the Ministry of Health, we ran into two different directors involved with health care, with drug distribution, with administering health facilities and ensuring quality of care, who were so drunk as to be incoherent. It was 10 in the morning. One was rambling and shaking hands and slurring his words, toddling around, stumbling, in the middle of the courtyard where patients coming to the hospital (which is part of the MOH compound) were assembled to receive care. Incidentally, he was walking right past the minister’s office. But he had no shame.
The other I didn’t witness. Ed and Emmanual went to have a meeting with him and when they arrived after lunch, he was too drunk to recognize them. He pulled out our business cards and began going through them one by one, starting with the name Neesha, and ascribing it to Ed. He took them in circles, repeating himself, gazing off into space, and ultimately admitting that drugs, including anti-malarial’s, which were suppose to be distributed long before the rainy season came, had been sitting around the office since March, signed for, but not sent out. Sitting, in boxes, on the floor, while hundreds of people died.
The baby that George and I saw in Lafon who was sick with malaria could have used those drugs. So could the people in Keyala, the people’s whose houses had been burned down and who were living under a tree, out in the elements, bait for the anopheles. This particular shipment was bound for a hospital, but the hospital hadn’t received them (we know, because the sister who runs it was with us at the Ministry) All it takes to distribute medicines, to administer health facilities, to improve quality of care, is organization and computer literacy, and dedication. Secretaries could do a better job than these men. In the United States, this would be deemed criminal negligence. Nurses and doctors showing up to work drunk. It happens all over the state, in every hospital or center or unit. Men and women who hold people’s lives in their hands, who are some of the few in the position to actually make a difference and affect change and save lives, are throwing it away, and creating more pain and suffering for the people they are suppose to help. This undermines the entire system, the reputation of the health facilities, and the trust of the people. Who would bother to walk 10km with a child or a sick family member in their arms, if once at the facility, they were seen by a drunken doctor who does more harm than good? How can you expect people to begin to trust the medical profession (particularly at the expense of witchdoctors and traditional medicine) if health professionals at the centers don’t give you personal care, and your healer does?
Yet these men can’t be fired. It is risky business firing people in Sudan. Times are unsteady as it is, people have insiders to back up their appointments and keep them secure in their jobs. Unlike in the United States, where we claim to have a problem with alcoholics because they cant get jobs, here, you have alcoholics and you cant get them out of jobs. What kind of system is that? There are policies written to deal with this type of situation, but no one enforces them. So it continues, and medicines get held up and centers close and people die and learn not to expect anything better.

But perhaps just as appallingly, some negligence results, not from an addition, which one could argue you, have little control over, but from knowing and deliberate stupidity. Some men who show up to work sober cause more harm than their colleagues who show up drunk. We met with one man who was in charge of vaccinations and distribution. We were hoping to get the vaccination sites from him, to help in our distribution. Vaccinations are supposed to be given out at the payam or boma level, and to give you an idea, there are about 260 bomas. This man had 118 vaccination spots, for the entire state. 118 places to distribute vaccines in a state that is 80,000sqkms, or roughly the size of Maine. An area the size of Maine, with no roads, no highways, no infrastructure, one bank, and only 118 places to vaccinate someone.
Additionally, the vaccines were being stored at the incorrect location; the vaccinators were distributed not only incorrectly but illogically (the same amount given to Budi county, one of the smallest sections, to Kapoeta East, which covers from the boarder with Ethiopia all the way down to the boarder with Kenya, and stretches all the way to Torit.)
When were in Keyala, we saw a small child with a skin disease. We originally thought measles but we found out the child had been vaccinated the month before. But if the vaccination was expired, there is no telling what he had. How can you expect people to walk miles and miles and miles with a young child with them, to get the child jabbed in the arm, and given a fever deliberately, and walk all the way back, if the vaccine then doesn’t work. No one will come. This isn’t just harmful in the here and now, its harmful for the future. It’s taking steps backwards where there should be steps forward.

I am so frustrated at this. There is so much death and disease here, so much poverty, so much struggle every day to just do basic tasks. People spend a whole day cooking, and then on top of that have to find time to clean and fetch water and firewood, and send their children off to school and do all the other chores that prepare them for the next day. There are so many people already working so hard, and trying to improve, that to allow people who are either incompetent or addicted into the top jobs, the jobs that actually affect change, is morally irresponsible and completely against any type of long-term ideals for health. It creates distrust. Why will donors give money and medicine if the resources are misused? I don’t want this to be accepted as “how things are”. I don’t want people to expect this. Death wasn’t acceptable during the civil war. It sure as hell shouldn’t be acceptable now.

Bugs

I've realized why it is that I dont mind bugs here. Don't get me wrong. I am by no means a fan of them. But I expect them here. At home, I hate them because they aren't suppose to be there. Our house is clean and furnished and our showers sterilized and anytime an insect manages to get in, its an abomination because it isnt suppose to be there.
But here, it's expected. Just like I expect it to be hot everyday (and relish the days that it isn't), I expect there to be bugs crawling around my floor, my ceiling, my mosquito net, my shower. The family of crickets living, singing and reproducing (ew) under my desk dont phase me. I think of it as music as I'm going to sleep. I've discovered that its more fun to read in the dark with a flashlight, because the bugs flock to the light, and I can slam the book shut and kill them easily. I dont mind the centipede crawling around the wall, or the armies of ants running frantically up my leg because they live here, they are suppose to be here, they are normal and part of the experience of Africa, and I dont care.
I hate the flies. I give no ground to flies. They suck. But other than that, it's fine.
The only time I freak out is when I get surprised. If a bug lunges at my face (they often do), I squeal. If one comes lurking up behind me and buzzes by my ear, I throw myself off my chair to get away from it. Thats why it is more difficult to get use to lizards. They move faster. The second you see it, it is gone. It's much harder to get use to that.

Also, as a side note: You cant wear sunglasses here without looking like the world's biggest idiot. The only people who attempt it are young Sudanese men, who swagger around looking too cool for Sudan, or army men who ride their motorcycle past you and give you (I'm assuming) baleful, detached glances from behind their massive shades. George and I attempted sunglasses the other day. I looked ridiculous simply because I left the only pair of sunglasses that looks ok on me on the chair in Annie's apartment. The pair I have makes me look....bulbous. George looked skeezy. There is no other way to describe it. He looked like an extra from the movie Top Gun combined with an extra from Old School. It just wasnt working.
So, instead, I have perfected wearing hats (not-I look silly in those too) and what I have termed "The White Girl Squint". George claims I havent perfected it by a long shot but I prefer to think I have-and that the giggles that follow me when I use it are merely a product of my white white skin. At this rate, I am going to be tan on my arms and neck and face, and on half of my calves and then white as dough for everything in the middle. Today I showed Lucy my belly and she was like "For Sure you are white Emma" and told me it looked like Chapati dough, which I am sad to say is utterly true. I am what I eat. And all I eat is starch. Consequently I look like a starch.
I tried to tell her she needs to feed me mangoes and smaller portions of everything so I can come back all svelt, and she tells me, "No. I want you go to back FAT, nice and fat, so that everyone knows that Sudanese hospitality is excellent."

This concept is so not part of my plan.
Exercises start tomorrow! They must. Or I wont fit on the plane.

Bad Day (Mitigated by some good stuff)

Yesterday was a Bad Day.

To begin with (and quasi most-importantly) I discovered that all my money had been stolen. (Hopefully I will get the heads-up email off to my parents before they read that here). It was about $850. Can we say "OUCH"? The last time I checked it was about a week ago (the day I got really sunburned and went to the market with George) because Ed asked me for $100 to change into Sudanese Pounds and I had my money then. Today was the first day I checked it since because I kept it in the bottom of my suitcase and figured no one would ever find it there. The only thing I can think of is that there were a couple of guys working on our toilets who were in our rooms when we weren't; I think it disappeared then.
Understandably I freaked out and spent all of yesterday in a funk. I know it is only money, but that is A LOT of money-my parents money-money that I am not sure I (or we) could afford to lose. I feel irresponsible and stupid. If I had been mugged, at least I would know for sure how it was taken, and the first question everyone asked would be "Are you ok?" but this was just sheer stupidity on my part. I tried to keep the door locked all the time, but with two people living in the same room and only one key, sometimes it was left unlocked. There are people all around. I didn't think anyone would go in without someone else noticing (which is why I am blaming the toilet cleaners).
I ripped my entire room to shreds three times yesterday looking for it, and put it all back together today (still looking for it) but no sign. So I have to accept that right now, I have about 180 SP's to my name (or about 90 dollars). I know Ed wont leave me with nothing, but the idea of a month and a half here with nothing is scary and makes me feel vulnerable. Not to mention I feel sick every time I think about how much money it was. I hope the damned idiot is using it for like...building a school for blind children or something.

Anyway I was wandering around in a funk about it all morning. Of course that happened to be the day that we were going to the market, so I felt really sorry for myself. I was walking around in my only clean shirt (a zip up hoodie, not even a shirt) because of laundry, and I had the hood pulled over my face so only one eye showed and I was wandering around looking pathetic and a bit like the Grim Reaper. This was also the morning we investigated the car, which brings me to the second reason the day was awful. This car is a death trap. (Hopefully my parents will find this a more compelling and awful piece of news)

The car is a 1994 Mitsubishi Pajero. The flaws with it are numerous. Let me list them:
-No Left Side view Mirror
-Leaking gas tank
-Leaking brake fluid
-No brake lights
-Windows in the backseat don't roll down at all
-Our battery is tied together with a piece of inner tube
-Our seat belts were embedded in the backseat and when we pulled them out, revealed themselves to be coated in oil.
And that's just what we have discovered so far. Our driver, Jerome, is very nice, but hes a twenty year old guy. He is pretty much run on testosterone, beer, and fried goat. He is a good driver, but I worry that the age combined with Death Trap Car will mean fatal accident. Especially considering that according to Ed, car crashes are the most common cause of death in Southern Sudan.
How is this for the world's least reassuring post.

Lets get on to the (mostly) good news.
Ed has inspected the car very thoroughly. I'm going to take some driving lessons on it (it is automatic) "just in case" which isn't reassuring at all, but there you go.
We took it for a test drive with Jerome, which I'll get to.

Back to my bad day. So I'm moping around and somehow get convinced to go to the market with everyone, even though I don't feel like spending money since I am poor. We all cram into the Pajero. It smells like fish. (I mean really, how bad can this day get? The Death Trap Car smells like FISH. WHY?!) There is Ed and Mark in the front seat, Lucy, George, Neesha and I wedged in the back, and Jerome in the trunk, precariously balanced on the spare tire. Keep in mind, this is the first time we have driven this car at all and Ed is driving.
We turn out to be so wedged in that when we stop in the market place and Ed parks, I open the door and instantly fall on the ground. My day, clearly isn't improving, and George decides this is the time to tell me that the reason he convinced me to go to the market is because its not my day and I will be a lightening rod for bad luck, so his day will most probably be great.
We go to the Arab store (I inform everyone what I have been told about Arabs from my Sudanese friends, which is that they cheat people and live in squalor, which may not be true, or politically correct, but it seems to be the opinion of some-though that doesn't mean I should repeat it-anyway). The three of us (G, N, and me) buy some mango juice. The last time George and I were in this store, we were wandering around, dazed and confused, clearly American, and so thirsty that we were practically handing them 200 pounds to give us a soda-and they charged us six pounds. Now, we are with three native people and Ed, and they try to charge us 20 pounds. George and I react in outrage, and Ed tells us that we should yell the word for "change" in Arabic at them.

Want to know what the Arabic word for "change" is? Fucka. Seriously.

We leave Ed with the Arab traders haggling over the conversion rate of dollars to SP's, and go and sit in the market. Ed comes out with two Arab guys and says hes going to drive with them to get money and that we should wait for him. This seems sketchy but we let him drive off blissfully. Lucy, George, Neesha and I wait. And wait. And wait.
We start taking pictures of each other with the merchant hanging out with us. He tells me some men are eyeing me. I ask what a good bride price would be. They say 400 cows at least, maybe 600. Men passing on the street start throwing in their two cents. One guy tells me he would buy me for 400, another one ups it to 500, the Arab merchants sitting with us start laughing and telling me to keep going higher. One guy comes up to me and I think hes offering me cows, before I realize that its Charles, our journalist friend that took us to Lafon and did a radio article about us. We visit for a while and he starts to wander off when I see a donkey cart. I decide I want to pet the donkey.

Unfortunately for me, it turns out Charles knows this particular donkey cart owner, and before I know it, I am trying to struggle my way up onto the donkey cart (yes. there are pictures.) Then the guy tells me "Ride the donkey!".
So I ride the donkey.
The donkey wasn't particularly pleased with this arrangement. He started lurching at people (including a small boy selling eggs) and finally, after literally everyone in the market has pointed and laughed at me, the donkey cart guy says "OK. My donkey is annoyed. You get off now." That was fine with me.
After this debacle we decide we were conspicuous enough, and wandered off into the market. Two other unharnessed donkeys followed us up the street, after one of them caused a traffic jam because I was trying to pet it and it was running away. (sigh) They even waited for us when we went inside a shop, and then continued on behind us.
I decided since my day was so awful, I would buy a chicken (a live chicken!) for us to have for dinner, since we haven't had chicken since Juba and my protein level is like, nonexistent. Of course, the second I decide this, there are NO chickens to be found anywhere in the market. For real? COME ON.
I tried to ask a couple of merchants where we could buy a chicken, but their English wasn't good enough to understand the word chicken. So of course, being a jackass, I start miming and clucking and waving my arms around and going "CHICKEN. CHICKEN"
They got the idea, but didn't know where to find one. One gave us all free lollipops, probably because he thought i was mentally retarded. The children of the market were HIGHLY amused.
After about an hour of searching, I go to find a soda, and voila! a tied up rooster is under a table. We bargain and they sell it for us. I put it in a bag. Armed with my rooster in a bag, we go try to find Ed to give us a ride back for lunch.
(and, by the way, because my day was so bad, of course my lollipop fell out of my pocket while I was walking, so i didn't get to eat it)
I also got a bit attached to this rooster. I wanted to find it a lady chicken to give birth to lots of chicken babies so we could have chicken all the time. (I apparently don't really understand the gestation period of chickens as I thought all of this would happen in about a week and a half). Regardless, no chickens. Ed picked us up and we went back for lunch (which was fish, because my day was just THAT BAD)

But, I'll say something for Ed. He knows how to cheer a girl up. Partly to test the car and Jerome, and partly to make me feel quasi better, he took us on a drive to the Imotong Mountains. It was suppose to be an hour there and an hour back, but we kept on going and didn't get home until seven (we left at two thirty).
The mountains were incredible. Father Ben was our guide (he is 35! he looks like he is 23! I hassled him about this for like, ten minutes). We drove up and down the mills and mountains, past teak plantations (gorgeous) and into what I termed a "jungle" (in the sense that it was a wet forest) There was bamboo growing everywhere. In fact, I hate to add even more nerve wracking information to this post, but we drove through a mine field.
DON'T WORRY. It was mostly cleared. If you drove in between the two painted stones, you were fine. We drove past SPLA barracks and through rivers and over bridges. We finally got to the end of the road-the end of the cleared, mine free road, and stopped briefly at the village of Imilai. The pastor was there so Father Ben chatted with him. I found out where all the chickens of Torit had gone. To Imilai. You have never seen so many damn chickens. And BIG. We took a walk with a guide down to the Kenyatti river (their bridge was a huge tree pitched across the banks) and we walked onto the tree and seriously considered going swimming before I realized that I would of course get schistosomiasis because of my bad luck day.
As we were walking back, this little kid spotted us. He couldn't have been more than like...two. He was butt naked and the second he saw me, sweaty and white, he took off screaming after his parents. This little naked baby was running in front of me down the pathway screaming in terror, screaming "KHAWAJA! KHAWAJA!" so of course I video taped it. I mean come on, it was hilarious.
Then we sat around with the pastor and the chief for a while and talked about the health of the villages which was fascinating because this village is in the middle of nowhere, up in the mountains, about 19 km from any health site. We told him about our plans for nets and he seemed to really like the idea.
Then we headed back. Of course there was thunder and it threatened to rain the entire time. I was in the trunk because Jerome was driving and Ed had to sit up front with him, and I'll be damned if I let someone as brave and noble as Father Ben sit on a spare tire. I actually really liked it back there because there was a window. No seat belt. Sorry dad. But I figure the spare tire kept me pretty wedged in there.
As we were driving back it was night. The fires people were burning their garbage in was spotting the distance with pockets of light. And then, as we got to one of the barracks, we saw the most incredible, huge fires, reaching up higher than the houses, looking like the village was burning down. It wasn't, it was just the grass they were burning, but it was like driving through an inferno, with walls of fire on either side of the road, so close they could have licked the side of the car.
When we got home, Abigail had fried the chicken, and it was delicious. And then George and I got in a mango fight and he threw mangoes in my bed and I had to change my sheets and we bickered and then I read my books the whole night and fell asleep at nine. And during the night, the rain was so hard that I woke up and lay there, listening to it on the tin roof and watching it splash outside the window until I slowly fell back to sleep.

Killing Time (and Flies)

The thing is, when the generator is off, its difficult to get things done.



Yesterday was a slower day. We worked until our batteries died on our computers, and then we scattered. I went out and chatted with Abigail, our cook for a while. She was so interesting. It turns out she is a pharmacist by trade, but cant find work as one. She was working as a chemist in Kenya (getting paid $50 a week USD-can you believe that?) but you cant work and live there-there just isn't enough money. She said that Kenya is nice, and there is lots of food, but getting money is a huge problem, and the tribalism is awful. She told me she cant walk into a store if she is of a different tribe than the people that run it. Sudan is difficult in that she can find work, but not a place to live. I know she doesn't want to be working for the Diocese-considering her other jobs-not only as a pharmacist, but working for an American woman distributing drugs, or working for someone else going and visiting different dispensaries-and I wish I could help her find a better job.

After chatting with her I wandered off to do research. I am kind of freaking out about this. I am most of the way through June, and I haven't even finished my FIRST book. Of six (not counting the summer reader which is all about thermodynamics-ack) and the three essays are due on August 4th, and I barely have time to read because I'm doing so much work for the internship. What I'm really worried about is that the RFA will come out around the same time and I'll have to divide my time between the proposal and the essays. I think if that happens I will email them and ask if I can turn the essay question in a week late, but I hope it doesn't come to that because I don't want to work during my safari.

Anyway I was researching, and then George came in and said he was bored, so we sat on my bed under the mosquito net and played mad-libs, only to discover that we are awful at mad-libs. We got some fantastic phrases out of it-most of them highly immature-but for the most part it was just not funny. Plus i had the hiccups. I mean really.

We also took matters into our own hands and constructed fly swatters (you cant find them in the market. its ridiculous) We made them out of the cardboard from one of my notebooks and some bamboo sticks and the duct tape from our med kit. We are having a competition to see who can kill the most flies (I'm at five, George is at...he doesn't know...maybe five?) and we came up with phrases to say when we get a confirmed kill (mine is BANZI and George is JANGA). But of course, the second that we made these fly swatters, all the flies disappeared. I kid you not. Not a single fly came near us, and we were sitting outside, not even covered in bug spray. COME ON.

So we wandered off to try and find something else to do, failed miserably, did some more work, argued a bit, ate dinner (rice with sauce. yum) and ultimately, went to sleep.



Today was better. We walked into town-a really nice walk, especially in the morning (about 3/4 of a mile we think) and went to the Ministry of Health. We met with the Director of Medical Supply (Daniel), who had a list for us that we already had. Then we sauntered over to try and meet the Minister of Health herself since she was there that day, and had a grand old chat with her secretary Doris, who told us she would call us when the Minister was ready for us. So we wandered over to the EPI cold chain and met the Director of Primary Health for Eastern Equatoria State (Gabriel) who told me I could come to his office after lunch to get his list of all the medical facilities in the state. The cold chain people were less helpful, as their generator had died so they had no power, no computer, and no...well....cold chain. Ed arranged to go pick up the man and his desk top computer and drive them to the Diocese so we could steal his vaccination points with their longitude/latitude markers. From there we went to SSRRC and got the list of bomas and payams that Rex has continued to compile for us (he was out), and from there we walked to the Census-which gave us an entire list of every boma, payam and county compiled from the census data. Then we walked back to the Minister's office and had a meeting with her.

She is spectacular. She is a dynamo. I love her. Plus she smells good. She is this regal woman, very well dressed in bright greens and blacks, and her jewelry was gold and gorgeous. She was impeccably pulled together, and wasn't sweating at all (contrary to me, who looked like a drowned cat) and she sat in her office chair like it was a throne. She is excellent with eye contact, her office has this kind of glamour to it, despite (or perhaps because of) being in this decaying building. Her secretary brought us cold sodas and ice water, and she spent forever talking with us. She is one of those people who has mastered the ability to give their full attention to someone when she meets with them, and doesn't constantly worry or rush to get to the next appointment. She gave us a list of all the health facilities that she knew of and talked to us about the difficulties of verifying what was up and running since there wasn't transportation.

It was a really informational meeting.



Then we started to walk back for lunch. Ed wanted to call a taxi to drive us and we insisted that we walk (he needs his exercise) but he lucked out in that after walking about three feet, Father Andrew drove past and gave us a ride. Ed was pleased.

At lunch, I met Susan's guest. Susan works for the US Institute for Peace-shes a consultant from Kenya. She is working on compiling law information from the different areas. She had brought Chief Madelina with her. Madelina was chief of Imurok, behind the mountains of Lafon where the Lopeat live. She was just incredible. To begin with, female chiefs are extremely rare, and she has been the chief since 1980. But beyond that, she is the head of the council of chiefs, elected BY MALE CHIEFS, to lead it. This is INCREDIBLE guys. It gives me hope! Both the Minister of Health for the state, and the Head of the Council of Chiefs are WOMEN. And what is more, they got to their positions by being considered equal and elected by men. Anyway Ed was spectacular with her. He could speak enough of her language to communicate and we had a very multilingual lunch, pulling out every bit of every language we knew. We got so much information about population and set up and health and government. It was fantastic. And i spoke a bit of Arabic to her, and we all laughed at how bad I was. Oh well. (I was also sitting on a broken chair which was threatening to give out at any moment, which added a level of hilarity and uncertainty)

After lunch I caught a taxi with Susan and Chief Madelina to the courthouse, and from there I walked over to the Ministry of Health. I had my meeting with Gabriel, and promised to give him any additional information that we gained in our efforts. He was able to tell me how many PHCC and PHCU (units) were functional and how many weren't, but he couldn't tell me which ones were which. He also told me locations of antenatal clinics in all the counties. I tried to meet with Daniel and Doris but both of them weren't in their office so I walked back home.

It was a lovely walk. There was a nice breeze and everyone said hi to me. Some girl came up to me and asked me for money or biscuits (I told her I didn't have any, which was half true but damned if I'm giving up my biscuits-and in my defense she looked healthy and well-clothed. So there.) And another guy rode past on a motorcycle and shouted to me "HELLO MY WIFE! HELLO!!" which was cute. I had a great time. I got back sweaty (really really sweaty) and did some more work, and then sat outside and researched. As i was doing that OUR CAR CAME! YAY!

I have some misgivings about this car. Its been broken a lot, the driver apparently was incapable of getting it here in any kind of timely manner (three weeks. three freaking weeks from Uganda to Torit. I dont think so) and our driver doesnt speak the local lanugages at all. So we will see. But it was exciting because Mark was there (I love Mark, we met him in Nairobi and he is always smiling, plus I know he would take us on adventures because he took Miller-I just have to convince him to stay) and Grace, Bishop Paride's niece was very nice and Jerome, our driver, seems nice, if short. And young. Hes my age. And considering this car is an automatic, I might be a better driver than him.

Now its suppose to be dinner time but the generator keeps going off, leaving us in the dark. Not so fun. Hopefully I can post this soon.

For Dad-What I Learned in Lafon

George and I actually DID work in Lafon (Thanks dad) although I hadn't realized that the cabbage and beer contributed to why we were so gassy (seriously, we kept blaming our farts on the goats).
We interviewed the director of the CRDF (a local NGO based in Lafon dealing with repatriation and development). He told us a lot about the statistics of Lafon, and the logistics of it. Malaria is a huge problem there. (Considering that the first child we met had malaria, I can believe it). Norwegian Church Aid built a school, but didn't do anything to staff it, so there is this skeleton of a building in the middle of a meadow with no teachers, and thus no students. Merlin built a Primary Health Care Center (PHCC) but it is sorely underfunded, understaffed and under supplied. It is also in an unfortunate location. (12 km away from most villages) People have to walk 2 hours (if they are health-carrying a sick person it is more) to get to the PHCC, and once they do, they typically don't actually get treated because there is no medicine. "Serious cases" (cases lasting longer than a month) get referred to Torit, but this creates its own set of problems since there is no transport to Torit except for one lorry that comes three times a week (ostensibly) and costs an arm and a leg.
Women who get pregnant have no one to help them. There is no antenatal clinics, and only sometimes are there traditional birth attendants. Women don't get nets, medicines or care before the baby. If the birth becomes complicated, there is no recourse. Women often die and so do their babies. There is no hospital for the state of Lafon/Lopa-which...for an entire state, that's just atrocious.
Distributions have been done there before, specifically of food and sorghum, because of bad sorghum crops in the past couple of years. (In fact, one woman who saw me seized my hands and started telling me (in Pari) that she knew i was back to reinstate the food program and she was so happy). The roads aren't easy-but they manage to have a lorry, and they certainly have beer deliveries so I don't think that (during the dry season) it should be difficult. In fact, Lafon is shaping up to be one of the easiest (rather than the hardest) places to distribute because the population is so concentrated, the bomas so cohesive (among tribal or clan lines) and the distribution process so solidified. The educated people are using nets (such as Rex's parents) which is such an encouraging sign-as was the fact that my bed in my hut had posts for hanging a net from.
People often use folk remedies (filling their houses with smoke, using Neem tree leaves) to help with malaria-the often have no other recourse because there are no ACT's at the center. In fact, the governments policy is completely a dream in Lafon-instead of one PHCC for every 50,000 people and one unit for every 18,000, there is one PHCC for about 100,000 and almost no working units at all. No organizations are based there really. Merlin is (slightly) and CRDF, but other than that there is nothing-no church presence, no BRAC, no big NGO's like NPA, NCA, UNICEF, UNIMIS, UN or anything. Lafon seems to be at the edge of the world, but thank god its clustered at the edge of the world, so at least finding people once you are there is possible.

As for the chain of what goes where (Dad-here's a shout out for you) I don't know. I'm going to talk to Ed about it because it is a very interesting concept and I haven't thought about.

As for what tukuls are like (This is for you Mary Liz) here is what I know:
Tukuls are either circular or square, but they tend to be a uniform size. The basis of their structure is bamboo poles that are set into a skeleton. Then, mud and cow dung are mixed together to make the walls-and let me tell you, its like cement. George and I were astonished to find out that it was dirt and poop. It was STRONG. The roofs are made of bamboo poles reaching up to a point (and tied together with palm leaf rope) and covered with thatched grass. Roofs that go low down to the ground (almost covering the entire house) were common in Keyala-these are for protection. Enemies often try to get inside, but they have to walk around to find the door-giving you time to hear them. They also try and stab through the roof at people, so if the roof is covering more space, they are more likely to miss. Shorter roofs like those in Lafon are less for protection and more for temperature control. Lizards live in the eaves of all tukuls and eat the bugs, small triangular windows are put into the walls to allow some air circulation, and doors are typically constructed of corrugated metal.
For storage, people construct a rounded raised edge all around the inside and outside of the tukul-on the outside this helps with rain water, and protects the foundation from rotting, on the inside it acts as a place to sit, or a higher up place to put jugs, jars and boxes on. Tied between the eaves are ropes that people hang their clothing off of, machetes and other implements are stuck into the straw of the roof, and bags and bottles for water are hung with ropes from the bamboo poles of the ceiling.

I think that's it.
and PS.-when I say cow's urine, I mean that they take a gourd and slosh it around with cows urine, and then throw the urine out, and pour the milk in. The urine is what curdles the milk.

Lafon!

If I was ever stupid enough to consider myself to be roughing it in Torit, the trip to Lafon put me squarely in my place. Lafon, a town about three hours away from Torit (by car, on roads that don't really count as roads) is one of the most remote areas in Eastern Equatoria-trumped only by villages like Kuron and Nanyangachor up by the Ethiopian border. George and I went up there with Rex, the director of SSRRC (and my new best friend) and Father Andrew.
The way up was crowded-I was in the front with Rex’s wife (in a normal seat for one) and the driver, and about seven people and a bunch of bags were in the back. We started down this dirt road that was really just a series of muddy ditches lying ahead in a quasi-straight line. That was the road. And PS. We drove out in style. Three trucks filled with helmeted, camouflaged, gun toting UN troops accompanied us. They had to go 30 km's an hour, and got stuck about three times, so it took them the whole day to get to Lafon. Suckers.
The drive took a while and we only got stuck once-in this huge puddle of black cotton soil. Luckily we had the world's best driver and got us out.
As we drove up to the village, we suddenly noticed a bunch of people in bright blue uniforms crouched in the grass, holding rifles. George and I thought we were about to be ambushed by the least subtle army contingent ever, but it turned out it was the police force making everything safe for the governor's visit.
We got into the village at around one-ish. It was gorgeous. Everyone had been telling me how it was full of flies, but even staying in the portion of town being taken over by IDP's, it was still breathtaking; settled at the foot of this huge mountain.
We got out of the car (achingly) and hung out under a tree for a while. They brought us beers instantaneously, and it was the beginning of a trend. There wasn't much water in Lafon, but my god was there a lot of beer.
Next we drove over to the rest of the villages. All of Lafon was burned down in 1994, and the villages have relocated to further away from the mountain. It was about ten-twenty minutes by car, but about 2 hours by foot. First we stopped at one village which was like a city. There were tukuls surrounded by twisted branches and fences. It spanned out the entire horizon; it was HUGE. We dropped off a guy there and then veered off the road and into the bush. There is no road between the various villages. We drove across the meadows, honking every time we came near some sheep or goats-who would then take off running, looking REALLY stupid. I encouraged the driver to aim for herds, because it was so fun to watch. Also, some boys who were farming started running behind our car with their hoes, and one of them stabbed Father Andrew in the chest, and he rapped him on the head with the hoe. It was hilarious. Except it probably wasn't for the kid, or Father Andrew.
To get to the next village, we had to go across a dried river bed. This was...well...very vertical. We were headed straight down into the dirt, and then straight up out of it. I was incredibly impressed for this whole trip about the things that cars could do. I mean, cars in the US don't act like this.
When we got to the next village we drove around completely confused as to how to get in it. Rex was surprising his parents, who lived there but didn't know he was visiting; they came running out and saw him and hugged him and his wife, and then George and I. It was really sweet. Unfortunately we couldn't really get near them since we were covered in small children that had piled onto us as soon as they saw us come near.
At Rex's parents house we visited for a bit. We went into the tukul and George was given the Stool of Honor (his butt didn't quite fit, it wasn't until later that we realized you were suppose to perch on it, not sit on it). When we left, we visited Father Andrew's family in the next village over (I got the Stool of Honor here, although this stool was actually a branch.) As we were walking to the car, we saw a stable. It was just a mound of dirt surrounded by gnarled branches. The door to it was TINY.
Father Andrew dashed inside somehow and told me I could come in (there were baby lambs and I was cooing a lot)
So, in full view of all these small children and half the village, I attempted to scramble in. Unfortunately, I wasn't as accustomed as Father Andrew to crawling inside, and I got stuck: my butt sticking out facing all the small children, my front half inside, squawking to Father Andrew to help me. He laughed, and didn't really help me, and I crawled hands and knees through animal crap to get in (this was less of a problem actually, since I already managed to smell heavily like goat)
Once inside, he caught me a lamb. I was thrilled. The lamb, slightly less so. I was clutching this lamb to me and Father Andrew was taking pictures and the whole village was laughing and watching me and chattering among themselves. I may have inadvertently drooled on the lamb in my enthusiasm, which the lamb was not pleased about.
Then, I had to get out. This was more problematic than getting in. I demanded that Father Andrew do it first so I knew it could be done (hes big by the way, so if he could physically do it, i should be able to too). He scampered through like it was no big deal. Everyone around the stable saw the problem though. None of them thought i could make it through either and secretly i agreed with them. Next to George, Rex was whispering that in the car he had the winch, and that they could hoist me out if need be. George thought this was hilarious. I decided that as undignified as crawling through on my hands and knees would be, it would be better than being lifted out via crane, so I sacrificed my dignity and crawled through. The little children were delighted. Rex's wife, less so, because I smelled so heavily of goat and sheep.
After this fiasco, we headed back to Lafon Center where we were staying. Anytime I would go “Oh look at that!' and start to take a picture out the window, Rex would shout with lots of urgency “STOP THE CAR, here, Emma, please, get out and take your pictures”, This was fantastic for me, but poor George was being consistently smushed against the back seat every time the driver jerked to a sudden halt.
I got these fantastic photos of the old grain mill. Rather than use a machine like they did in Keyala, the women used the rock. They would start grinding the sorghum against the rock until it rutted out these big holes. So this rock, in the middle of the grass (no longer used because of the burning of the villages) was completely and utterly covered in holes. It was amazing. Then of course they insisted that I pretend to be grinding sorghum down on my hands and knees, which resulted in some highly unflattering pictures, but I got a very good idea of how hot that rock got during the day.
We finally got back to the village and returned to our chairs. We were just visiting and laughing-we all got along famously-and drinking beer, and Rex was insisting we have fried beef before our main course of more beef, cabbage, dried fish and oogali. Unfortunately, I cant eat oogali ever since i vomited it into the sink in Nairobi, so I was just munching away on the cabbage, and eating the tiny bits of meat off the bones in the stew. It was delicious though.
Later, satiated, George and I watched the car mechanic and Father Andrew chase this very unhappy chicken all over the compound. It eluded them for about ten minutes before one of them caught it, the whole time squawking as loud as anything and hopping up and around the tukuls. It was hilarious, we almost died laughing. Father Andrew would pause from running around the hut to shout at us to stop laughing, and then resume his ridiculous chase of the chicken. Unfortunately for the chicken, once they realized it was such a pain in the ass to catch, they left it tied up by George's hut-which he discovered when he was walking inside and it squawked indignantly at him.
We also observed (and ultimately helped) about eighteen men set up these huge tents. It was so amusing watching them wrestle with these huge sheets of canvas, trying to figure out what in hells name they were suppose to look like. We tried to help, but as we were helping, they started to slaughter the goat.
I suppose I sounded a bit more enthusiastic than I actually was because I told them I had never seen a goat slaughtered before and they insisted George and I go watch. Poor George had no desire to do this but he came along anyway. It was awful actually. Really long and drawn out and brutal, and i took pictures which looking back on i feel bad about. I thought it would be quick, but they were sawing at its throat for a good couple of minutes before it died. It was disturbing. Sorry goat. (Although i have to admit, I ate it later. So did George. Oh well, guess there is no standing on principle).
Of course by this point in time it was dark and I, being the world's biggest fool, lost the one thing i actually needed-a flashlight. Rex was wonderful and sent someone to buy me one, while George and I covered ourselves in 100% DEET in hopes of evading the swarm. The night was really cool and the moon was so bright it looked like daylight. We went to set up our beds and hung our nets from the grass ceilings of the tukul and then tucked our sheets over these mattresses that, while comfortable, looked like they would be capable of nurturing scabies. I made the wildly stupid choice to stick my flashlight in my mouth while i tucked my sheet in, thus getting DEET all over my lips and causing my entire face to go numb for a bit. (George later got it in his eye. The two of us aren't so good with bug spray).
I was exhausted even though it was literally eight pm. At around nine, after my third beer which I couldn't really finish, I went off to bed. Originally, lacking a pillow, I had snuggled around a dry bag stuffed with clothing. I had put my pants up by the mattress that was exposed to cover it, and theoretically protect me from scabies. But it smelled so godawful-like sweat and goat and sorghum and yeast-that i had to shove it down by my feet. And I actually froze all night long, which was both pathetic and unexplainable, since George, two huts down from me, was sweating all night.
In the morning we got up and had beer, first thing. And goat. And cabbage. The goat was very tender. Then we hung around for a while, before hopping in the car with two chickens and a bunch of people in the back of the car and dashing off to the villages again. We had breakfast with Rex's parents. More goat, and sorghum oogali (I cant eat that either). They gave us a taste of both sorghum grain alcohol (very very very strong) and sorghum beer (vats full of it. It tasted like yeast). We sat inside the tukul and visited with Rex's father (which was delightful, he told me I was his daughter and he was my father and I gave him a big hug). At one point, this chicken which was tied up behind me utterly wigged out against my back and i freaked out and everyone laughed at me. A baby started crying and I gave her my finger to grab and then she didn't let go and the woman started walking away and I was trailing after her saying “Good morning! Good morning!” since it was some of the only words I knew in Pari, until she turned around and freed me from her child's clutches.
I was working that language though! I knew like....maybe seven words total, but just the fact that I knew a little and used it all the time seemed to make everyone very happy or very amused. I couldnt tell which. Again, I held entire conversations mostly consisting of the words “bbear” and “qwase” which both mean good, since we couldnt understand anything else the other one was saying.
After that, we went to Father Andrew's village again and they fed us more food (sour milk-milk by the way that was soured with cows urine which i did not realize until George brought it up later, after I ate about a cup full) and some more sorghum oogali and more sorghum beer. When we left, we had aquired two goats, and three people, and everyone was just crammed into the back of the car.
We got back to the main center. George and I, now dying of thirst but unwilling to state that officially, went on a “tour of the markets” where they didnt sell water. They sold beer. Alas.
Then we packed up our rooms, which was a bit of a fiasco, and repacked the mosquito nets (even MORE of a fiasco) and hung out outside with Rex. He had flopped down on some tents so we did the same and got some nice relaxing minutes of silence.
Oh and I forgot to mention. There was a pit latrine (in fact, all the IDP's were building them, which is a HUGE step towards sanitation and hopefully will catch on in the villages), and we got interviewed by this journalist for the radio (while we were interviewing the director of the CRDF) and we were supposedly on the radio this morning-or at least, a story about us was. Thrilling! Second time on the news in one trip!
Anyway then we got back in the car for the ride out. It was about two thirty or three. I was in the front again with Mrs. Olum and the driver (who had had lots of beer) and in the back. My god. In the back (a back the size of the Ford Escape's backseat and trunk) was: Eleven people, one baby, three guns, two goats and two chickens. George was back there too. HA. It was a bumpy ride, one of the ladies in the back got carsick and threw up out the window (I gave her gas-x hoping for a placebo effect, which didnt work as she instantly threw up out the window again and sat for the rest of the ride with a scarf over her head). The goats would periodically attempt to stand up, which would startle everyone who was resting their feet on them, and everytime we hit a bump the chickens would start sqawking loudly-hilarious.
I also found it completey amusing and amazing everytime we got out of a huge ditch, and they were amused by my amusement, so we spent a lot of time laughing. We stopped at a village and hung out for a bit, and then got back on the road. We also had to stop to “check the tires” periodically-there was some trouble with the “back ones”-meaning that one of the men would shout “I think something is wrong with the tires!!” the car would stop, and about eight men would leap out the back of the car and run into the bushes to pee.
About halfway there we started listening to the radio which eased the bumps considerably. We listened to the BBC (chinese people have been offically labeled “black” in South Africa) and as we rolled into Torit we were blasting Destiny's Child “Say my name” and honking furiously at everyone in our way who would spring out of the way of the oncomming car. We went to Rex's house first. He has the MOST adorable family. All his kids ran up saying “Mom! Dad!' though not in english and his two puppies Tiger and Jollum were running around being adorable-I snagged Tiger and spent a wonderful ten minutes cuddling him. (Hello Rabies! But not really. But i suppose its possible. But probably not)
One of his little girls grabbed some dried fish that Jollum had managed to steal from inside the house, and she was chasing it around on the ground going “JOLLUM. HERE JOLLUM” and Jollum, looking extremely confused that his food was moving so much, was scampering around going “WHAT??! WHAT??!!!”
Father Andrew is obviously a good friend of theres, because he picked up the kids and swung them around. It was so cute. Rex said good bye to us and promised us a goat filled feast in the next couple of days, and we headed on home for the worlds best shower, pasta, and gatorade. I went to bed at eight thirty again. Pathetic.
Check out the pictures. This place is epically beautiful.